Help me identify this game from the 1980s.

December 20, 2004 5:31 PM

ObscureComputerGameFilter [mi]

I'm looking for the name of a computer game I saw in a store. Once. In the late 1980s.

I think it was set on a space station. Your character has been betrayed, maybe, and is currently in jail. Maybe. You have to run around the space station, evading security, gathering information, and doing, er, stuff. I believe that the game presented a side-on view: your character could run around, jump (or climb?) from floor to floor, talk to various characters, and, er, do stuff.

It was a display copy, so I remember a few details from the manual. Most notably, there were various classes of people and special locations, of which not all were good. Thus, there were three bartenders (maybe) on the station, of whom two could be trusted. "To find out which," the manual would say, "turn to page XX," where XX was some two-digit number. There were other such things - spaceships? merchants? I don’t remember - and in each case, the manual would say that page XX would tell you which were trustworthy. Page XX itself was blank.

I remember being intrigued by this setup, although the game itself looked like it wasn't very much fun. The only other thing I can remember is that I was also looking at a copy of Infocom’s Suspended at the same time (I think), which suggests a rough timeframe: probably some time 1985-90.

Ring any bells for anyone?

posted by grimmelm to sports, hobbies, & recreation (8 comments total)

Hrm - makes me think of Space Quest 1 (1987), but I'm not sure.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 5:39 PM on December 20, 2004

No, it wasn't any of the Space Quests: those I can remember just fine. We're talking obscure: I spent quite a lot of time in computer stores in the decade between 1985 and 1995, and I only saw this game once.
posted by grimmelm at 5:45 PM on December 20, 2004

You could try looking through the annals of Home of the Underdogs, they have a ton of abandoned software from the 80's and early 90's that you can download and play. Almost all of my old favorites are there, but they carry a lot of obscure games also.
posted by hindmost at 6:00 PM on December 20, 2004

It sounds like Centauri Alliance.
posted by iconomy at 6:07 PM on December 20, 2004

Brataccas, for Amiga and Atari ST, by Psygnosis

KYNE IS GUILTY
posted by steveminutillo at 6:12 PM on December 20, 2004

Hot damn, steveminutillo, that's it! Thanks!

Another hard-to-Google question falls before the mighty cognitive power of the hivemind! This one has been nagging at me for years, and AskMe got it in 41 minutes.
posted by grimmelm at 6:51 PM on December 20, 2004

..
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:29 PM on December 20, 2004

Whoa... I remember being intrigued by Kyne is Guilty at a computer store as a yung'n.
posted by skryche at 7:57 AM on December 21, 2004